The Hospital del Mar, with more than a century of existence (1914), has always been very focused on the study to combat infectious diseases and the control of viral and bacterial plagues of epidemics and pandemics.
Today, it continues to be a point of reference for study, teaching and scientific medical research, as well as being one of the best health institutions to provide services, both in the city and in the Barceloneta neighbourhood, where it has maintained a very close relationship throughout its history.
Its beginnings
During the Middle and Modern Ages, there was the Hospital de Sant Pau and the Santa Creu inside the city, which, together with the convents dedicated to charitable work, provided health care. Outside the city walls, from the 16th century, there was the Casa de la Sanitat, a centre dedicated to people suspected of being carriers of possible infections so that they could be isolated and quarantined.
Throughout the 19th century, the city and the neighbourhood suffered several epidemics. The first to appear was yellow fever, in 1821, which arrived by ship from the Americas. The Port would always be a point of entry for diseases and infections, and Barceloneta would suffer its consequences very directly.
The next epidemic was cholera, from 1833 to 1835, which broke out again from 1853 to 1856 and 1865.
In 1870, yellow fever reappeared, which also arrived by ship from Cuba.
To combat all these diseases, the Health Boards ordered the construction of hospitals, set up convents or public buildings to be used as improvised hospitals and created brigades to bury corpses. To avoid contagion, the measures applied were to close the city walls and paralyse the economic, cultural and social life of the city. In both cases of yellow fever, Barceloneta had to be evacuated because it was the most affected neighbourhood.
In 1905, Barcelona City Council decided to open the Lazaretto of the Maritime Section of the Park. For its creation, the pavilions of the navy of the Universal Exhibition of 1888 were used, which were still rudimentary buildings that occupied the same site where, in 1929, the ten-storey horizontal building of the current hospital was built. This Lazaretto was the embryo of the Hospital Municipal de los Infecciosos de Barcelona, which years later gave way to the current Hospital del Mar.
1914-1939
In November 1914 a deadly epidemic of typhoid fever devastated the city and what was then called the Maritime Section of the Park became, in 1915, the Municipal Infectious Diseases Hospital, to treat patients with plague, typhus and other contagious diseases.
In the 1920s there were few epidemics, the population recovered somewhat from the ravages of influenza, and the only patients admitted to the Municipal Hospital for the Infectious Diseases were indigent and incurably ill people. This resulted in the Hospital being divided into two separate wards: one for the Infectious and the other for the Incurable. This situation was dangerous because it was not possible to ensure the isolation of the infectious. This was the moment when Barcelona City Council took the decision to build its own building to provide adequate care for infectious patients. So, in 1920, work began on the new Hospital del Mar.
The City Council chose the site of the old Casa de la Sanidad, which was located between the viaduct and the future promenade of the city and from the Catalana de Gas factory to the Somorrostro road. This location was chosen because the only buildings in the surrounding area were industrial and there was no nearby town prone to contagion. The project for this hospital was designed by the municipal architect Josep Plantada and although work did not begin until the mid-1920s, it was not until the International Exhibition of 1929 that there was a push in its construction, and it was inaugurated in 1930 with the definitive name of Hospital del Mar.
The design of its construction was based on individual pavilions, which allowed the isolation of each of the patients, with spacious, clean rooms where, within the strictest sanitary regulations, any type of patient who was affected or in an infectious-contagious process could be attended to. To this end, new doctors were hired and the Darderes Sisters, who remained until 1977, were contracted for the nursing work.
At the time of the Republic, the fundamental mission of the Hospital del Mar was to contribute to the defence of public health as an instrument in the fight against disease. Barcelona City Council considered it to be an integrated part of the Municipal Institute of Hygiene, promoting the study of infectious diseases by organising research courses, conferences and publications by prestigious medical staff.
During the Civil War, both the Hospital and Barceloneta, due to their proximity to the gas factory, the heavy machinery industries and the proximity to the Port, became a key target for the Italian air force, which bombed them night and day. In 1937, a bomb fell on one of its pavilions, causing the death of workers and sick people. In mid-December 1937 it was decided to evacuate it and move all the sick and medical teams to the Hotel Florida del Tibidabo as the new headquarters. From then on, there were difficulties with transport, heating, water and electricity supplies and restrictions on food, medicines and medical supplies.
Once the war was over, in 1939, the Hospital returned to its original site. The first decision taken by Franco’s City Council was to purge and dismiss the doctors, nurses and administrative staff who had been on the Republican side. One of them was the director himself, Dr. Josep Maria Grau, who was removed from his post and never returned to practice. The other agreement made by the City Council was to change the name of the Hospital del Mar to Nuestra Señora del Mar.
1940-1975
After the Civil War, the hospital continued to treat serious epidemics such as smallpox (1940), typhus (1941-1942), polio (1950) and cholera (1971).
Despite this period of difficulties and restrictions, Dr. Lluís Trias de Bes i Giró, director of the Hospital from 1940-1961, created the Institute of Tropical Medicine, a speciality that was practically unheard of at the time, designed from Nazi Germany itself. Dr. Trias de Bes was also the promoter of the Municipal Institute of Medical Research, better known as IMIM, in 1947, which was inaugurated a year later by the prestigious doctor and Nobel Prize for Medicine Dr. Alexander Fleming, who took advantage of a stay in our country at the invitation of the Franco government.
In 1950 the first steel lung in Barcelona was acquired, which allowed patients with lung failure to breathe, and the surgery service was inaugurated. In 1959 there was a large outbreak of poliomyelitis throughout Spain, which mainly affected children as a result of not having been vaccinated during and after the war. Faced with the need, the Hospital created an exclusive service for the study and treatment of the infectious disease and promoted mass vaccination of all children.
In 1969, the Institut Neurològic Municipal was built within the hospital premises. This new building, with ten floors built horizontally, benefited from the general services of the hospital and was an icon within the health park as a whole. It was during these years that it became a reference in cases of tetanus and gangrene due to the availability of a single-seater hyperbaric chamber and the first intensive care unit in Spain. In 1971 there was an outbreak of cholera and the Hospital was chosen to receive all the sick and suspected cases, not only from the city, but from all over the country.
1992, Olympic Hospital
After the death of the dictator, Barcelona and the whole of Spain opened a new chapter in its history. The hospital, of course, took part in this transformation.
In 1986 the International Olympic Committee decided that Barcelona should host the 1992 Olympic Games and the Hospital del Mar was chosen as the Olympic Hospital. The relationship with the city remained very close. A new challenge of change in which a large part of its facilities were renovated. During the days of sports competitions of the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games, and under the coordination of Dr. Pedro Benito, the Hospital took charge of attending to the Olympic Family, the management of the Anti-Doping Laboratory and the sex tests.
Today
Over the last few decades, the Hospital has established itself as one of the leaders in healthcare, teaching and research knowledge in the Catalan capital, integrated within the Hospital del Mar.
